Larcombe, W; Malkin, I --- "The JD first year experience: design issues and strategies" [2012] LegEdDig 45; (2012) 20(3) Legal Education Digest 41

• The JD first year experience: design issues and strategies

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The JD first year experience: design issues and strategies

W Larcombe and I Malkin

Legal Education Review, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2011, pp 1-22

As increasing numbers of law schools offer a Juris Doctor (JD), or a ‘graduate-entry’ law degree leading to admission to practice, there is a corresponding need to understand and support the first year experience of students commencing study in law as postgraduates. Australian research on the first year experience of law students has, to date, focused on the social and academic support needs of school leavers making the transition to tertiary study.

This article seeks to contribute to the knowledge base on the JD first year experience by providing an overview of first year measures implemented in the JD program at Melbourne Law School (MLS) over the four-year period, 2008–2011. MLS has offered a small, ‘stand-alone’, Masters-level JD program since 2000. However, that program was significantly revised and the JD has been offered in a new form since 2008 when MLS became a Graduate School under the ‘Melbourne Model’. As intake numbers have increased, a range of strategies and programs have been developed to ensure that commencing students from diverse backgrounds are effectively supported to make the academic transition to study in law, and to successfully complete their first year studies in a graduate program.

Although JD students’ first year needs are likely to differ from those of first year undergraduates, in the experience of the MLS there is a similar need to design and manage the JD first year experience proactively. The strategies adopted at MLS are informed by the extensive literature about first year transition which highlights the need to intentionally design a first year law program so as to optimise student engagement and learning outcomes. Kift, Nelson and Clarke note that these outcomes are achievable only through the development of effective and sustainable academic-professional partnerships to ensure that the academic, administrative and support aspects of the first year are ‘seamlessly’ integrated.

The first year in higher education is rightly the focus of extensive educational research and institutional activity. As Vincent Tinto has argued, however, the ‘open door’ that universities now present to students from a range of backgrounds is more likely to be a ‘revolving door’ for low-income and other ‘equity’ students if appropriate transition and academic support programs are not in place to ensure their retention and achievement.

A rewarding first year experience is critical for student persistence and retention. Students are at highest risk of dropping out of university in their first year. Of course, a degree of student attrition in the first year of university is inevitable, and not all the factors that contribute to a student’s decision to discontinue their studies are within an institution’s control. The focus of first year experience policies and activities is thus directed to limiting preventable attrition by improving the educational settings that institutions create for first year learning.

Particular attention has been directed in recent years to strategies that institutions can adopt to promote and foster student engagement. In short, students who are actively involved in the social and academic life of their university are more likely to persist and succeed in their first year in higher education. Universities should therefore ensure that their first year students are integrated into the social and academic life of the institution and that they are also actively involved with others in constructing and questioning knowledge.

It should first be recognised, however, that the academic and social needs of JD students are not identical to those of undergraduate law students. As Wingate outlines, ‘learning to learn’ at university is ‘a complex personal development process’ for undergraduates as it involves ‘learning’ how to be an independent learner as well as learning how knowledge is constructed within a discipline. For graduate-entry students that experience is behind them: their prior academic achievement indicates that they successfully adapted to and learned effectively within the social and academic life of a university. They are also more likely to have made a well-informed choice of program, based on strong motivating reasons, and to be experienced and skilled in juggling multiple commitments, including balancing study with paid work.

It is apparent that the ‘first year’ needs of graduate-entry students differ in important ways from those of first year undergraduate students. However, the commonalities are likely to outweigh the differences. Students commencing studies in law as graduates are still involved in a process of transition: to the new disciplinary environment and its methods of inquiry; to learning how knowledge is constructed and communicated within law; and to becoming identified with the legal community and the professional careers for which the course is preparation. Further, graduate-entry students are similarly diverse in their expectations, preparedness, backgrounds and interests – in some ways, this ‘diversity’ may be even more pronounced in a commencing graduate-entry cohort than in an undergraduate commencing cohort. Consequently, the first year experience in a JD program must be designed to mediate and support the learning needs of a heterogeneous cohort transitioning to learning in a new discipline – as in an LLB program.

At the MLS, a number of strategies and policies have been developed and adopted over the past four years to ensure that the first year JD curriculum engages new learners in their learning, promotes awareness of and timely access to support services, and creates a sense of belonging.

One of the key elements of the first year experience in the MLS JD over the past four years has been the compulsory, pre-semester, foundational course in ‘Legal Method and Reasoning’ (LMR). This is a credit-bearing course/subject, taught intensively over a twoweek period in February, before the beginning of the first semester.

LMR is taught in small groups (up to 25), each with a dedicated teacher who leads four hours of seminar-style classes each day, interspersed over the two weeks with library-based research skills training and whole group events.

LMR has three principal transition-related objectives. First, the course aims to establish a common level of knowledge and understanding of Australian legal institutions, legal sources and legal methods of problem-solving. In our experience, graduate-entry students commence study in law with a wider range of base knowledge than undergraduate students. For example, some graduate-entry students have considerable familiarity with legal sources and methods of reasoning from years of experience working as paralegals or court officers; some have a good understanding of legal institutions and procedures from postgraduate study in criminology, politics or international relations; and some graduate students commence study in law with no understanding of legal sources and methods, nor of Australian legal and political institutions and processes. LMR thus has an important function as a ‘leveller’, ensuring that all students commencing the first semester have a common, foundational understanding of legal sources and institutions.

The second objective of LMR is to engage all students with the basic skills of case reading and statutory interpretation which they will need to apply in their first-semester courses. In the first week, students learn to read cases (complete judgments) and to develop an understanding of common law reasoning and precedent. In the second week, students learn to navigate statutes and their related regulations and extrinsic materials and to develop an understanding of statutory interpretation principles. The two compulsory assignments (released on a Wednesday and due the following Monday) enable students to demonstrate their development of these fundamental skills. In our experience, students from a wide range of academic backgrounds are able to approach their first year in law with greater confidence after seeing for themselves what they are able to do after just two short weeks in LMR.

Finally, LMR aims to foster a sense of group cohesion and to enable social connections to develop so that students have established relations with peers, academic faculty members and professional staff before the commencement of first semester.

The MLS offers a range of resources and services to support students’ academic transition and skill development, provided by Equal Opportunity Liaison Officers, a Student Welfare and Wellbeing Coordinator, a Language and Academic Skills (LAS) Adviser and a Research Skills Adviser.

Early intervention to support the development of students’ generic academic skills is vital as a foundation for the acquisition of more specialised legal skills. Consequently, in LMR, all students complete a short, 200–400-word in-class writing exercise at the end of their second day of studies. The exercise is assessed by the LMR teacher and returned with comments within a day of completion. If a student’s submission demonstrates difficulties with written expression – grammar, sentence structure, paragraphing, cohesion or logic – she or he is referred to the faculty’s LAS Adviser. In an individual consultation, the LAS Adviser explores the student’s needs and designs a strategy for skills development and, if needed, support for first-semester assessment.

Students’ development of legal writing skills is further supported across first semester by an online suite of ‘Legal Academic Writing resources’, which include annotated examples of student writing in various legal genres. In addition, first year JD students can get feedback on a penultimate draft of their first research assignment (usually due around week 8 of first semester) from our ‘Legal Writing Advisers’ (LWAs) – a small team of PhD students trained by and working alongside our LAS Adviser in the 7–10 days leading up to the assignment’s submission. The feedback is not content related – LWAs do not tell students if their analysis is ‘correct’ – rather, advice is focused on the skills required by the writing task. This form of support is very popular with first year JDs, and has also ensured a higher standard of written work.

Student-facilitated study groups have also proven to be popular with first year JD students. Later-year JD students, who have been identified as excellent communicators, are employed to facilitate a series of first year study groups with six to eight students per group. Groups meet for an hour each week to discuss key academic skills and review course content across the four first-semester courses. The LAS Adviser trains and supervises the student facilitators so that they can guide their groups to develop independent and effective study strategies. Evaluation of the program has consistently shown that this form of learning support is especially popular with students who do not otherwise have regular contact with peers outside class and who describe themselves as less confident about speaking in seminars.

Timely access to wellbeing support and advice is now also a feature of the first year MLS JD program. It is well-established that law students in Australia suffer from disproportionately high rates of depression and anxiety and that legal education at both graduate and undergraduate levels has a negative impact on student wellbeing.

Two key strategies have been adopted at MLS. First, individual support and referral of students experiencing distress is offered at MLS by our Student Wellbeing and Welfare Coordinator. This is an important position, enabling coordinated ‘case management’ of students experiencing personal difficulties that impact on their learning. In 2011, an additional, more proactive measure, was implemented by the MLS in conjunction with the University Counselling Service: a pilot series of ‘mindfulness’ training workshops addressed specifically to law students and conducted in the law school.

The four-part ‘Introduction to Mindfulness’ workshop series demonstrated a number of formal and informal practices of mindfulness and taught students how to integrate them into daily life. Those students who completed the program evaluated it very positively and, importantly, enjoyed reduced levels of stress and anxiety at the end of the program.

It was anticipated that it would be just as important to actively foster student engagement and a sense of belonging in a JD program as it was in an LLB program. Indeed, awareness of the JD students’ comparatively higher commitments to paid work and family care made it even more likely that their time on campus and their participation in a range of co-curricular activities might be restricted in ways that limited their engagement with peers and the broader learning environment that the law school provides. Consequently, at MLS a range of strategies and policies has been adopted to foster a student’s sense of belonging – to the JD program cohort, to the law school, and to the profession.

An obvious but sometimes overlooked strategy is literally to ‘create space’ for the commencing cohort so as to develop a sense of belonging on the campus. Over the two weeks, one can observe the ‘new’ students gradually making themselves at home in the classrooms, student lounges and study spaces, becoming familiar with key staff and services within the Law Student Centre, the Legal Academic Skills Centre, the Law Library and the Careers Office.

Another important strategy for creating an engaging learning community has been the decision to impose an attendance requirement for all JD compulsory subjects. First year experience research has established that there is a strong link between ‘students’ attendance on campus and their involvement with and integration into the learning community’. Subject teachers maintain class attendance records and either contact persistently absent students directly or forward information to the law school’s Student Welfare and Wellbeing Coordinator to make enquiries.

Two strategies have been adopted to ‘connect’ first year JD students to the wider legal profession. Participation in a ‘Guest Lecture Series’ is also a compulsory program requirement for our first year JD students. Students’ introduction to legal professionals is further supported in the first year by a professional mentor scheme, first introduced in 2009. Although the scheme is voluntary, in 2011, 85 per cent of the commencing cohort enrolled to be matched with a professional mentor – a legal professional working in an area of particular interest to the student (across community, private, government or corporate sectors). Mentors and mentees are matched and introduced by the Program Coordinator and, after a welcome function, meet at least three to four times during first year.

Beyond LMR, the first year curriculum at MLS has been designed to provide a sequenced and integrated program with an emphasis on vertical development of public law and private law principles and procedures. However, the scope for improved horizontal integration of the curriculum has been identified, given that most JD students at MLS study four courses each semester of the first year. A group within the faculty initiated a ‘curriculum integration project’ in 2011 aimed at improving cohesion across the courses in each semester of the first year curriculum. Key outcomes of the project include a set of resources for first year teaching staff that will enable them to better identify conceptual and doctrinal links between courses within and across semesters, to use common cases and problem scenarios, and to build on the knowledge and skills students have developed in previous study – either in the foundational LMR course, or in the first semester.

A second curriculum project was initiated in 2011 to investigate best practice and to develop a comprehensive plan to address student wellbeing in all aspects of our graduate law program design. To support that plan, the project will collect empirical data about the extent and nature of student depression and anxiety within the law school, and also about student resilience and effective stress management techniques. Such data are vital for understanding the (positive and/or negative) impacts on student health of the cohort-based graduate law experience; for developing targeted and appropriate evidence-based interventions; and for evaluating the effectiveness of such interventions.

Better data, from a range of institutions, is also needed about the academic and social support needs of graduate-entry law students in Australia and their first year experience. In particular, reasons for attrition (or retention) among graduate-entry cohorts may be different from those known to affect students who drop out of their first year in higher education. For example, poor or uninformed program choice has been identified as a factor contributing to first year undergraduate under-achievement and attrition. However, this is less likely to be a factor contributing to attrition in graduate-entry programs, where students are generally making choices with a better understanding of the features and elements of particular programs and also, hopefully, with a better understanding of their own interests, goals and skills.

On the other hand, a second reason for undergraduate attrition – financial stress – may have an even greater impact on learning and retention for graduate-entry students. Financial stress is known to be one of the factors contributing to disengagement and attrition in the first year of higher education, particularly for students from low socio-economic status backgrounds. Given their more ‘mature’ age, and increased responsibilities for family care, the level and impact of financial stress experienced by graduate-entry students would certainly merit further investigation and understanding.

The impact on learning outcomes of the higher levels of paid work and family commitments being undertaken by graduate-entry students also merits investigation.

Providing access to programs does not afford students with educational opportunity if those programs are not intentionally designed to support and mediate students’ diverse expectations and levels of preparedness. For law schools, there is now the additional obligation to actively foster student wellbeing. Optimising learning by promoting engagement, providing timely access to appropriate support, and creating a sense of connectedness and belonging are surely the core ‘business’ of first year – in both graduate and undergraduate law programs.